Level of Description
Scope and Contents
The Robert H. Crabtree papers (1920-1999) sub-series contains an extensive account of Crabtree's career as a professor and archaeologist. Materials includes correspondence, photographic prints and negatives, reports, and notes of archeological surveys and excavations done in Southern California, Southern Nevada, Washington, Oregon, and Mexico. Collection includes resources such as field catalogs, proposals, newsletters, annual reports, workflow documentation, conference materials, and meeting minutes from various archaeological and anthropological societies and organizations. The subseries also includes class notes, dissertation drafts, and manuscripts used by Crabtree during his academic career. Digital files include field notes and reports.
Date
Extent
Collection Name: Elizabeth von Till and Claude N. Warren Professional Papers
Box/Folder: N/A
Conditions Governing Access
Where use copies do not exist, production of use copies is required before access will be granted; this may delay research requests. Arrangements must be made in advance to access digital files; please contact UNLV Special Collections and Archives for additional information.
Additional Description
Biographical / Historical Note
Robert Herre Crabtree was born September 27, 1928 in Chehalis, Washington. He attended the University of Washington, Seattle, and obtained bachelor’s and master’s degrees in anthropology. During his early years, he spent nearly every summer in Plateau archaeology and wrote his thesis on the archeology of Rabbit Island and the Pot Holes site.
Crabtree worked as an archaeologist at the Pacific Northwest Pipeline and Shell Pipeline networks. He moved to the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) in June 1960 to become a teaching and research assistant, and worked as a graduate research archaeologist for the UCLA Archeological Survey. Crabtree worked at various sites in southern and central California and in Colima, Mexico. Crabtree was a research assistant to Claude Warren at the University of California, Santa Barbara in 1969.
He moved to Las Vegas, Nevada in 1969 to become a research associate at Nevada Archaeological Survey and a lecturer at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV). Crabtree made vital contributions to the development of UNLV's anthropology program. Crabtree taught the UNLV Lost City Field School in 1971 along with Warren. Crabtree also contributed to the development of southern Nevada archaeology by offering workshops for the Archaeo-Nevada Society in 1969, training avocationalists and amateur archeologists. He was a research associate at the Desert Research Institute Museum in Las Vegas, Nevada from 1969 to 1970.
Crabtree moved back to California in July of 1973 where he served as a Director of Archaeology for Archaeological Research Incorporated in Costa Mesa, California. Crabtree worked on projects in the Imperial Valley and southern California coast. While continuing his work as a director and president at Archeological Research Inc., he returned to Las Vegas in 1976 to work with Warren on Chumash pottery jar research. During this time, he also collaborated with others on monographs on the archaeology of the Mojave and Colorado deserts. He joined the Bureau of Land Management in 1979 and transferred to Tonopah, Nevada until his passing on January 17, 1986 due to cancer.
Source:
Claude, Warren. "Robert Herre Crabtree Remembered." Journal of California and Great Basin Anthropology 8, no. 1 (July 1, 1986). https://escholarship.org/uc/item/14k8898w
Arrangement
Materials are arranged by topic.